Body Armor

At times not even the most skillful of warriors can evade a weapon blow, and only his or her armour stands between blade and flesh. A piece of armour is simply any article of clothing worn upon the person that is designed to protect and defend against attack. They range from the simplest linen rags and hardened leather tunics to heavy plate armour, which only the strongest fighters can wear.

* Armor found on Normal or Nightmare can have at most 3 sockets. Found on Hell can have up to 4, but never more than that specific type of armor allows. This refers to grey socketed armor, not magical Jeweler's or Artisian's armor. See this table. Sockets from the socketing quest are erratic, they can be more or less than the maximum for a type of armor on a given difficulty level.

Exceptional armor looks just like normal armor, but comes with much higher Str and Clvl requirements, and can only be found on Nightmare or Hell in D2. It can also be found in late Act 4 and Act 5 in the Expansion, where the drops of it Exceptional items are based on Monster Levels

* The most sockets possible to find in armor are 3 on normal and Nightmare, and 4 on Hell. Many types of armor can only have 2 or 3 sockets, regardless of what difficulty level they are found on. The socketing quest is erratic, it can add more or less than the maximum per difficulty level, but never more than a type of armor's max.

Elite armor is the top of the line. It does not exist in Diablo II, only in the Expansion, and can only be dropped by monsters late in Nightmare or in Hell. Monster levels hit 90 and cap there by late Act 3/Hell, so any time after that you have a chance to have any type of Elite armor dropped.